Therapist claims that 7/10 men fantasize about raping a woman - thoughts?

Therapist claims that 7/10 men fantasize about raping a woman - thoughts?

She's even writing a paper about this, based on the data and frequence of male patients confessing to have had those fantasies.

I can see many men having at least the thought crossing their mind, but I'm not sure that as many as 7 out of 10 would confess about fantasizing about forcing themselves on a woman - in my opinion, much less would confess to it.

On the other hand, when I went online looking for data, I found wildly different results, with the only consistent one being a study claiming that 45.8% of the interviewed men confessed to rape fantasies. At the same time, when I asked her how many women actually confessed to said fantasies - not as victims, but as perpetrators - she said that only two of her patients shared something of the like, and one of them had said fantasies not on a man, but another woman - which is somewhat consistent with the data I found online, where polls gave that roughly 10% of the women that voted claimed they fantasized about forcing themselves on someone else.

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Superb Opinion

  • There are four things to remember about such "studies."

    1. The results depend on people self-identifying themselves as having rape fantasies. Depending on the group you are surveying, there are people who are motivated to deny this though they actually do have this fantasy, and there are people who claim to have this fantasy even though they actually do not. (Think about the people who confess to murders that they did not actually commit.) The results of self-reports are notorously inaccurate.

    2. A therapist's impression of the frequency among the men who she has had in therapy has no bearing on the frequency of this fantasy among a population of "normal" men.

    3. People who report such "results" are wanting to get some attention drawn to themselves and shockingly outrageous claims draw attention much more than those reports that tell us what we already knew.

    4. Having a fantasy about something does not mean that you actually want to do it. When I was younger, I got so angry at people that I fantasized about setting their house on fire or murdering them. Once I started fantasizing, of course I knew that these would be horrible things to do and even just entertaining the fantasy made me feel guilty.

    • "Think about the people who confess to murders that they did not actually commit" - there are a lot of those types here. Usually people that are looking for an attention. I too had - and sometimes still have - fantasies about humiliating or beat up people that cross me. But a fantasy is a fantasy.

Most Helpful Guy

  • I think it's important to factor in that not all niches of men go to theropy equally. There's a lot of guys who strike out with woman a lot and have extremely low confidence and I would be willing to bet the percentage of men "willing to confess" drastically changes based on local culture and population density.

    Also i think a lot of men who say this are really just sexually frustrated and wish they could just grab a woman and have their way with them because the lack of control they feel in their ability to satisfy their own sexual needs hurts their self image in many many ways.

    I think it's actually very similar to why poor people fantasize about stealing but won't do it for moral reasons.

    But psychology realizing that is still probably another 20 years away

Most Helpful Girls

  • I think your therapist is full of shit, honestly.

    7/10 of her male patients didn't confess to having this fantasy. So wth is she doing? She's 'reading between the lines'. GTFO.

    You should create a poll on here, and allow anonymous comments. Let's see how this goes. Just phrase it smartly.

    I'll summarize it this way:

    Men sometimes love really good, passionate [and rough] sex. There's some element of roughness, anyway.

    But what's the #1 wish that men have [this is in my anecdotal evidence, in talking with men, throughout my life, and reading a hell of a lot about sexuality, psychology, etc.): They want their female partner to be more into it. They want her to have a good time. And they know that if they force sex on her, it is the opposite of that. So, I just don't buy this.

    • The first thing that seemed weird to me was that she referred to those unspecified "pools" - where did she take them? What strata of the population are them?

      As a man I can confirm that once in a while I too get into the mood for getting rough, but it's fun and exciting if she's into it. If she's not in the mood, then it ends pretty quickly.

      "You should create a poll on here, and allow anonymous comments. Let's see how this goes. Just phrase it smartly." that's a good idea, but I have to study the execution.
      I had asked a similar poll not too long ago and the results were not what I expected Have you ever been raped? ↗
      I also had three people - two girls and a guy - private messaging me their stories.

    • Your husband is a lucky man :) ~~

    • @loveslongnails Mwah mwah 💋

    • Show All
  • If true, that's terrifying. But thankfully I don't agree. I can definitely see them enjoying a power play sort of kink, or maybe rough sex, but I don't see rape. Most of my friends and former friends are men, and only one has expressed desires to hurt women, and he's been excommunicated and ditched as a friend.

    • I agree. Likewise, people that like to roleplay being raped don't actually wish to be raped.

    • Exactly

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What Girls & Guys Said

8 27
  • Bullshit.

  • Rape, no never had those thoughts …I must be the 3/10 that don’t

  • Who knows? How biased a study was it? How many men were included in that belief? And maybe Smokey Bear fantasizes about starting forest fires.

  • I don't really buy it after the APA promotion of the idea of "toxic masculinity."

  • I don't. This may be personality, as I'm more concerned about the others feelings than my own. Hurting someone doesn't fit my psyche.

    It doens't shock me though, look at human history and what is propagated through our genes. Add to it all the movies that show violence and increase in narcissistic behavior... maybe. The ratio still sounds high.

    I've alway said... girls... arm yourselves, and learn martial arts.